WOMBAT 3 -- Day 1

The Word of Mouth Marketing Association's Basic Training (affectionately dubbed WOMBAT) got off to a great start yesterday with Chip Heath, author of Made to Stick. This book has been sitting on my desk for a couple of months, and I just haven't gotten around to reading it. Now, it moves to the top of the stack.

The book sprang from a question that intrigued Chip for a while: why do urban legends and other stories that are often false (like the "fact" we only use 10% of our brains) spread so far and become so engrained in our society while more important messages like the benefits of eating a healthy diet don't stick?

Like many of these books, he has an acronym made up of the first letters of the six criteria he discovered: SUCCES, for Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotional, Stories  (Fortunately, he apologized for such a corny acronym).

I was most struck by his discussion of the criterion of Concreteness. Working in a new area like WOM, it is often hard to explain what we do in a way that people unfamiliar with the field say, "Oh, I get it!" We often try to make grand conceptual statements that encompass the entire breadth of our knowledge.

Wrong.

He gave examples of concreteness that invariably invariably involved seemingly small details: like the power management technology company whose products were used on the Mars Rover, or retailer Eddie Bauer who was able to exemplify their dedication to quality and service with story of their founder sleeping in a butcher's meat locker to ensure his new Artic Tundra sleeping bag worked.

What are the details that bring the new "consumer in control" and "2-way dialogue" aspects of the new marketing world to such vivid life?

PS. Seen all over New Orleans: T-shirts that say "FEMA: Fix Everything My A**"